On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

This is still a work in progress. I am not happy with legibiity of the place names, not yet. I've switched most of the labelling over to Helvetica for now, pending a decision on what to switch the labels to.

If you know of any communities and connections that I should add to this map, please tell me!

This is part of a map I've been designing with help from assets from Maptorian. I was inspired by a map in the old Dent's Canadian School Atlas devoted to Canadian airline connections across the country, as well as by a recent job interview for a graphic design position.

I'm making this with Adobe Illustrator CS4, in case you're wondering.

An exercise in advertising for interstellar colonisation. More details on the Flickr page in the link!

...in fits and starts.

Click on the image to find out what I mean.



At least I managed to stay home all day.

...that'll be going to my sister's family on the day. Perversely, I don't have the money to buy cards made by other people right now, but I've got the hardware, software, ink and paper to make my own from scratch in the house. For now, at least.

So, I think I've found a vector clip-art silhouette or three that could populate the landscape on the front of the card. I can make the footprints in the snow, the stars in the night sky...but trees were a problem.

Now to see how to add curves to the snowbank without turning the snow from white-to-pale-blue to solid black. I know there's a way to do it in Illustrator CS4...and I just have to rediscover it.

Update 1: my colour printer is throwing up this message:

"There is a problem with the printer or ink system. Turn printer off, then on. If problem persists, contact HP."

"Cyan - cartridge has failed". The others, I've been defying HP re: where I get refills from for a couple of years now.

Update 2: Some cartridge-swapping, and a few shutdowns later, the card I designed was finally printed. Victory is mine, Hewlett-Packard!

It amuses me to keep playing with this. I learn things from this project. It won't earn me any money (unless someone with hiring power thinks this is evidence that I will be Useful), but learning from the work is fun and useful anyway. "Fan art" is good practice.

As ever, if Disney/Marvel wants me to take it down, I'm not exactly lacking in ways to be reached.

As for the rest of you, if you've any suggestions on stuff I should add/remove before locking this down, please do post in the comments.

Seeing as strangemaps is on my friendlist feed, and alasdair was speaking of how and why he valued maps, it seemed a good moment to post this particular work in progress and training exercise...

From Mythical Maps